An Arabic version of the perceived stress scale: translation and validation study.

Background: The Perceived Stress Scale has been designed to measure the degree to which situations in a person's life are perceived as stressful.

Objective: The paper describes the development of an Arabic version of the Perceived Stress Scale.

Design: A translation process with cross-cultural considerations was employed to produce an Arabic version of the Perceived Stress Scale.

Settings: Participants were asked to complete the Arabic version Perceived Stress Scale twice in their homes.

Participants: The Jordanian study population for the Arabic version Perceived Stress Scale validation consisted of 126 volunteers (74 male, 52 female). Ninety participants completed the scale twice (55 male, 35 female), of whom 58 were high schools teachers and 32 technical workers. Arabic was the first language of all participants and all gave informed consent.

Results: The Arabic version Perceived Stress Scale reliability and validity were evaluated. Prior to an exploratory factor analysis, the suitability of data for factor analysis was assessed with acceptable results. The exploratory factor analysis showed two factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.0 (45.0% of variance). The Cronbach's alpha coefficients were 0.74 (Factor 1), 0.77 (Factor 2) and 0.80 for the Arabic version Perceived Stress Scale overall. The test-retest reliability had an intra-correlation coefficient of 0.90.

Conclusions: The Arabic version Perceived Stress Scale showed an adequate reliability and validity. Therefore, the Arabic Perceived Stress Scale is considered a suitable instrument to assess perceived stress in Arabic people.